At nearly the halfway point of the season, there are seven teams with championship odds of +2000 or better, with three Eastern Conference teams and four Western Conference teams represented among the NBA’s inner-circle elite. Two of them will face off tonight, when the East’s top-seeded Detroit Pistons travel to face the West’s third-seeded Denver Nuggets at 9 p.m. ET.
Some Denver supporters had hoped that the team would have Nikola Jokić back by now, but alas, the three-time MVP has been ruled out as he continues to work his way back from a bone bruise in his knee. Cameron Johnson (knee), Christian Braun (ankle), and Aaron Gordon (hamstring) remain out as well, with Jamal Murray (hamstring), Jonas Valančiūnas (calf), and Peyton Watson (ankle) all probable. Detroit has a much shorter injury list: the only rotation player with a designation is Caris LeVert, who’s out with an illness.
The Pistons are 7.5-point favorites on DraftKings Sportsbook (-250 on the Moneyline), with the point total set to 215.5. The Nuggets are +205 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down the possible Finals preview and offer my prediction.
Detroit Pistons at Denver Nuggets preview, prediction
Detroit has been rumored to make an all-in move ahead of the February 5 trade deadline, perhaps packaging Tobias Harris’ contract with a young asset like Jaden Ivey or Ron Holland II to acquire Michael Porter Jr. from the Brooklyn Nets, but it’s not entirely clear that the Pistons have to. Even without Porter, they’re 33-11, on pace to win 62 games, which would bode well for their playoff success even if the East’s two 60-win teams last season didn’t do so well. Either way, any team that has Cade Cunningham, Jalen Duren, and a rising defensive ace in Ausar Thompson should feel good about its position for both the present and the future.
The same can be said of Denver, which has just tried to survive without Jokić. To be fair, it’s done just that, going a solid 9-5 without its superstar big man. That’s thanks in large part to Jamal Murray, who averaged 28.2 points and 8.4 assists per game across that span while canning 42.9% of his three-pointers en route to what will surely be his first All-Star appearance. Gordon’s second hamstring injury hurts — his plus-minus is second on the team behind only Jokić — but for the first time in Jokić’s career, the Nuggets actually have the forward depth to be able to replace him, with Watson especially breaking out during Jokić’s absence.
Pistons at Nuggets pick, best bet
Denver hasn’t been good defensively since losing Jokić, posting the league’s eighth-worst defensive rating across that span, but that’s hardly a surprise, given that it wasn’t good defensively with him on the court, either. The biggest room for optimism is that it has ranked 11th in offensive rating despite losing arguably the best offensive hub ever. It has continued to take care of the ball and distribute it well, ranking second in turnover percentage and 14th in assist percentage. The Nuggets’ biggest issue — the fact that they’ve ranked second-to-last in rebounding percentage — should be somewhat better tonight with Valančiūnas active, given that the Lithuanian has the ninth-highest career rebounding percentage in NBA history.
Detroit is just a challenge for any team. Across that same span, the Pistons have given up just 102.4 points per 100 possessions, four points per 100 possessions fewer than the Oklahoma City Thunder for the NBA’s lead. Duren is the linchpin of Detroit’s defense, which has conceded the second-fewest field goal attempts and the fourth-lowest field goal percentage on restricted-area tries this season, as well as the seventh-lowest percentage from the non-restricted paint. The Pistons have also been the league’s third-best rebounding team, and they rank second in points in the paint offensively. Their dominance inside makes them a bad matchup against a Denver team that has attempted the third-fewest shots in the restricted area since Jokić went down while also being among the worst rim-protecting teams.
The turnover battle will be key. Detroit has been among the league’s best transition teams, ranking second in points off of turnovers and third in transition points while also ranking in the top 11 in both categories on the other side of the ball. The Nuggets, meanwhile, have been among the worst teams both at forcing turnovers and at fast-break points since Jokić went down, though they’ve done a great job taking care of the ball on the other side. They’re unlikely to be better with Braun — Cunningham’s primary defender across the teams’ two games last season — injured, given that Braun did a better job defending him than Murray.
Denver definitely has the better shooters. Even since Jokić’s injury, the Nuggets rank in the league’s top half in true shooting percentage and three-point percentage, with Murray and Watson both ranking in the league’s top 20 in three-point percentage over expectation. There’s some element of luck to their offensive success, though: over the last 14 games, they still rank near the bottom in wide-open three-point attempts and have shot the sixth-highest percentage on such shots. The Pistons have shot poorly and gotten unlucky, ranking fifth-to-last in shooting percentage on uncontested looks, but Detroit is also better at closing out on opposing shooters than the Nuggets are. Denver’s opponents have shot an unsustainably low 32.3% on wide-open looks across Jokić’s absence, while the Pistons have had more neutral defensive luck.
Detroit is just the better team, and the Nuggets actually have a worse net rating at home this season despite Ball Arena’s altitude typically giving them a major advantage. For Denver to have gone 9-5 without Jokić with a negative net rating is more of a small sample size fluke than anything else, and the difference between its negative-1.7 mark and the Pistons’ plus-10.2 should be more than the 7.5-point spread.
